Grof passage

Copied from Beyond the Brain, Stanislav Grof, p. 298-299

'What should be seen as sane, normal, or rationally justified depends critically on circumstances and on the cultural or historical context. The experiences or behavior or shamans, Indian yogis and sadhus, or spiritual seekers in other cultures would be more than sufficient for a diagnosis of psychosis by Western psychiatric standards. Conversely, the insatiable ambitions, irrational compensatory drives, obsession with technology, the modern arms race, internecine wars, or revolutions and riots that pass for normal in the West would be seen as symptoms of utter insanity by an East Indian sage. Similarly, our mania for linear progress and “unlimited growth,” our disregard for cosmic cycles, our pollution of such vital resources as water, soil, and air, and our conversion of thousands of square miles of land into the concrete and asphalt one sees in places like Los Angeles, Tokyo, or Sao Paulo would be considered by a Native American or a Mexican Indian shaman as absolutely incomprehensible and dangerous mass madness.'